Alfred Hitchcock directs Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier and Judith Anderson in this romantic chiller where a young woman becomes the unlikely second bride of a troubled rich man’s whose dead wife dominates the country house our heroine must start her new life in.

Let us start out by addressing the Joan Fontaine in the room. She ain’t plain. She is about as far from “plain” as Pluto is from Cornwall. Having said that… this is probably my favourite lead actress performance ever. The sheer, constant anxiety and discomfort. And this girl is in love, has hit the lottery in terms of wealth and luxury… and she’s permanently on the back foot, nameless and lacking agency… Until…

Gone Girl secretly stole a ton from Rebecca. The dead wife, big R, the murder victim is a vindictive absence. All of Manderlay is a minefield since she died and one wonders how many of these emotional booby traps have been intentionally set before her final night? She’s broken every man she touches… either perverting them like her slick bastard posh tiger of a cousin (Hello George Sanders!) or breaking them like her dick husband or his quiveringly decent loyal second… Even the village idiot knows not to fuck about near Rebecca. She gets what she wants and if she doesn’t she’ll expose your basest, weakest flaw and flaunt it right back into your face. She’s so desirable she still serves cunt bloated under twenty feet of sea water, half eaten by crabs. And she has left behind her lesbian henchwoman. Mrs Danvers, one of the most deranged monsters ever to feature in a movie with no violence. Everyone Rebecca ever touched has the twisted inferiority STD she spread. And now poor little Joan Fontaine’s replacement girl has to stop from getting infected by the all the poisoned wrecks that have been left in the missing title character’s sexual wake.

So many fine sequences… the dreamy prologue, the whirlwind Monte Carlo romance, the trespassing into the forbidden bedroom, the party, the shipwreck, the confession, the inquest, the apocalyptic ending. Wow! I’m not a fan of Olivier as Maxim de Winter or how he treats Fontaine’s nameless waif. Maybe he deserves to be put through the ringer, she doesn’t. But she is the one who loosens his nuts out Rebecca’s death grip vice. She earns the title Mrs de Winter. You go, girl!

10

Perfect Double Bill: Rebecca (2020)

My wife and I do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/